


Trou8le

by orphan_account



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, F/F, F/M, Human AU, allusions to sex + violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-07
Updated: 2015-06-06
Packaged: 2018-03-29 10:37:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,884
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3893260
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p> <i>"I knew you were trouble when you walked in.”</i> - Troll Gandhi, probably </p><p>You did not plan on falling in love with Vriska Serket.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A human AU and discussion of Vriska Serket, human disaster and the idiots she ropes into relationships.

  _"I knew you were trouble when you walked in.”_ \- Troll Gandhi, probably 

You did not plan on falling in love with Vriska Serket. 

For that matter, nobody plans on falling in love with Vriska Serket. It isn’t hard to figure out – she’s not all soft edges and pleasing curves and painted lips wrapping around rose coloured words. As you remember it – and you remember it quite well, too well – she has always been the opposite; an amalgamate of sharp, strong bones that poke out at awkward angles, a flash of blue eyes set behind double-rowed lashes that made her look like her eyes were smudged with morning-after khol even before you two knew what the words ‘morning-after’ meant. You remember spindly fingers like the legs of spiders, digits with sharp nails that dug up under your own and pried you loose from the monkey bars, and you remember her as a high, sharp laugh as you lie there with a broken collar bone and a fractured ankle. 

The truth is, it has always been you who has been all soft edges and pleasing curves; and maybe your lips aren’t painted, but rose coloured words flow from them all the same. Your mouth is thick and soft and round and when Vriska kisses you at the prom a few years after the monkey bars incident, you flush and stammer and hide beneath the bleachers for the rest of the night, touching them with blunt, broad fingertips that tremble when you think of the scent of her hair as it fell against your cheek; cheap cigarette smoke and cheaper shampoo and the gushers she shared with you – green and blue for her, orange and pink for you, same as it always was, same as it ever will be – minutes before, sitting to the side of the dance and laughing as your classmates tried to approximate the Time Warp that your amateur disk jockey was spinning. You fell out of touch with her after that, and not even the kind of determination she had after all of your other accidents – the kind that had her pushing your wheel chair down hills to catch sweet air and using your crutches to sword fight random people in the lunchroom and writing notes for you in obnoxious highlighter yellow that semester when The Chess Club Incident ended in a torn rotator cuff, a sprained ankle, and eight stitches in your left hand – follows her. 

You accumulate other ways of growing up, other ways of putting on the thick skin she was always angling for you to grow over your soft features and softer heart. You buy leather jacket and a helmet and a motorcycle and your hands get calloused from all of the maintenance and riding. People sidle up to you in bars and clubs and diners and dives; they bat their eyelashes or push a drink towards you and ask about the muscles you’ve acquired too, and the drinks you haven’t yet, and you can’t help but laugh them off.  And your life is pretty quiet, you have to admit.

Quiet enough that you get complacent and forget that there are things to dodge other than the pawing palms of enamoured strangers and the drunken catcalls ("Those thighs hold on to anything other than bikes, baby?") that trail after you like so many gnats when you drive around at night. You get so complacent that it doesn't occur to you to be looking out for the shiny red sports car that clips the front of your bike, even as you try to stop, try to pull back from the imminent danger like you pull away from everything else that tries to take you head on. When your body gets launched from your seat, you have the sick sensation of flying, your senses consumed with the bright sunlight that filters into your eyes in slow motion.

Then your ears are filled with a sickening crack, followed by a popping noise that makes you want to vomit and a jolt of pain that nearly manages that feat. The idyllic summer day is drowned by the smell of blood and the soreness of your body and you blink, tears flowing freely as you try to take a breath and maybe also inventory of everything that's suddenly happening to you, all at once. There's a door that opens and closes somewhere in the equation as you're figuring out that your hands and arms and body are aching and torn and moving and your legs and feet are decidedly _not_ , and you look up to see a spectre of your past, the same face giving you the same look as every time you're about to pass out and reawaken in a hospital room.

That is to say, you see Vriska Serket's face looming over you before your vision fades to black.

It's there when you wake up, too, only illuminated dimly by the bright blue light of her mobile as she clicks into the screen rapidly, her long, almond shaped false nails making a crisp rap against the glass of the screen. You blink as the jewels that encrust them glint and glitter and hurt your already sore eyes, then look to the side. There's a window with shades drawn over it, but you can still make out the moonlight filtering through and down on to you through the plasticine slats.

"Am I, uh..." You start, your throat feeling like its been dragged along the pavement like the rest of your body, like the road rash you can feel running up one side of your chest. Her pointed face turns to you, fingers - and the rest of her, for that matter - going still, stiff. "...Dead?"

Lips, painted blue as far as you can tell, remain half open as she stares.

"...Vriska?"

You've never seen her hang on her words before, but she does now. At least, for a few seconds, which still seems unbelievable to you, who have always known her tongue to generate words faster than her brain can even receive all of yours, ever planning eight steps ahead. And then, her face is twisted into a conflicted scowl, clearly trying to express both relief and condescension and failing both emotions entirely.

"Do I look like an angel, dipshit?"

You manage a look of disbelief, despite absolutely trying to avoid feeling anything, emotionally or physically. Then, there is a giggle, which becomes a laugh, which becomes a steady stream of mirth tumbling from your wrecked throat. The lines of her face slacken before they re-harden, and her next words are a hiss spit from between clenched teeth.

"What. The hell. Is so damned _funny_." she asks, and you wheeze.

"You don't." You laugh, tears running down your cheeks for the second time today (what you hope is today, at least). "I thought I was in _hell_."

There's another blank expression from her before her lips tremble with a smile, then stretch with a laugh, high and loud and everything you remember about her. It settles into a smirk of satisfaction as she leans over from the white metal chair by your bedside and flicks your nose with her thumb and forefinger. 

The two of you spend the rest of the night with facts that you swap between each other and apologies that you don't. She tells you about the idiot she nicked that car from, and about being mad at him, and about not really seeing you or caring about the stop sign she blew (she does not mention the rings around her eyes and the bags that betray an utter lack of sleep, because you know Vriska does not 'do' emotions, and especially not the kind that involve acknowledging she cares about other people). You tell her about trying to get somewhere where the smell of summer flowers couldn't reach you after you buried your dog that morning ( you do not discuss the fact that you can't move your legs or the fact that Tinkerbell was your only friend these days or the fact that you wished, for about a split second as you were flying, that you'd land on your neck and not have to deal with waking up to an empty apartment and an emptier feeling inside of your soul the next morning). The two of you talk until the sun brushes violent neons in the sky like so many halogen lights, and a nurse comes in and gives Vriska a very severe talking to for not fetching her sooner.

They - the doctor and the nurses who follow her in tow - want to give you painkillers and you tell them that you don't really need painkllers and they give each other identical, ill-concealed grimaces. The doctor explains to you that your spine is broken and that you are now unable to walk and you take the news with a sense of calm that surprises even you and is suspicious to them. They even bring in a psychologist to talk to you, which is very nice, you guess, but you realize you're really as fine as you keep telling everyone.

You remember what it was like, breaking your leg when you were little, and the very nice psychologist asks you if you're aware that this is not going to heal like that did and you say you do, because you do. They ask if you've got someone to take care of you, and you're pretty sure it's the indication you give to Vriska that makes them keep you for a week longer, to make sure there's no lingering head trauma. But eventually, they determine that you're okay (physiologically, even if they do exchange three grimaces again when they see it really is Vriska who makes good on your word and picks you up from the hospital) and out you go into the world again. 

You're kind of touched when Vriska crashes at your apartment, in fact, and finally realize you're okay with everything that's happening because she's there again. You know that any mess Vriska Serket gets you into, she'll get you out of, too.

And she does.

She does it in being there, in moving from the couch into your bed, in moving from the chair beside yours at the table to on top of your lap, bickering with insurance agents and law enforcement on the telephone, her chin resting on your shoulder, wearing everyone down until things are resolved just so no one has to argue with her any more. She does it in the way she (blackmails or bribes, because you know it had to be one of the two even when she insists it's not and god, Nitram, don't you trust her already, why do the idiots she gets involved with always have to be so damned _picky_ ) talks one of her friends into fixing your bike better than it was when you got the damn thing. She does it in having strange little stirrups on the side that you can buckle your feet into and with the over-sharp laugh she offers up when you mention you can't drive it and she tells you you don't need legs to ride bitch. She does it in the way she always comes back, even when she's gone for a few nights (you'd say days, but she sleeps all day unless you wake her up to shovel some food into her mouth). She does it in the way her good eye lights up as she jumps in a shopping cart and races you down the hill in the grocery store parking lot.

And you feed her and bandage her cuts and lull her to sleep with fairy tales you and Tinkerbell used to read together. You greet her when she rises with the sunset and press a mug of hot coffee with eight sugars into her hands, brush the knots from her hair while she texts another acquired lover. You do not let her in your apartment when you know she needs to be somewhere else, making up another mess to another love. But you let her scream and pull at your clothes and wear herself out when there's nothing else for her restless soul.

And you kiss her.

And she kisses you.

And you save each other.

And though neither of you meant to, you fall in love.


	2. Chapter 2

You totally meant to fall in love with Vriska Serket.

Or rather, you totally meant to make her fall in love with you. A lot of people thought (and think, and will think for the rest of your natural life and possibly even well into your unnatural life) that you were crazy, that you are crazy that liking her is something no sane person could ever manage. And talks of sanity aside, you understand; Vriska Serket is sharp-tongued and sharp nailed and ever sharp witted. There's nothing in her that's soft or kind or flexible, but that's just fine for you. The truth of it is that there's nothing soft or kind or flexile about you, either.

Together, you'd been the tyrants of the playground, bullying the other kids into joining your respective factions, constantly divvying up the playground, only to turn on each other minutes later, trying to steal a choice patch of shade or the best tree for climbing. You remember her in the sharp stab of wood to your neck when she gave you a pretty set of scars there and proceeded to mercilessly and guiltlessly torment you about them ("seaweed breath" and "fish face" and "the creature from the black lagoon", she called you, and you had to knock someone out cold in high school before everyone else in your peerage would stop calling you "gills").

You remember her sharp elbows that jammed themselves under your ribs and her shiny red boots as she stomped your face into the mud and told you to breathe because she wanted to know if you were really amphibious (if you weren't a fish like you kept saying, maybe you were a toad, she had told you, and you had to sock someone _else_ out and even then you couldn't get rid of "frog prince" entirely). You remember her in your heart beating painfully fast and hard. 

She lives in the smoke that curls in your lungs now, hot carcinogens cradling the inside of your throat - she got you started behind the art studio room in the pottery teacher's free period, smoking in the kiln and messing with the wet sculptures there whose only crime was to be waiting to be bathed in flame at the same time your idle hands needed something to fumble with that wasn't the fastenings of each other's clothes. 

And she's in the way you like your back pressed up against something rough, in the way she had you the first time up against a fucking _tree_ when you were both supposed to be at some kind of team practice - track, you think - but your shit talking while you stole a smoke before hand had devolved into hair-pulling and kissing and neck-biting, and now it's not really satisfying unless you're picking splinters out of your back.

You should have fallen out of touch at some point, really. But the same way that you were mashed together in preschool, you're mashed together in middle school and high school, until even the councilors and staff make jokes about you two being so right for each other, so drawn together by fate that you'll have to get married. 

That's fine with you, you want to be the stone around her long, thin neck. 

You want to be pulling her hair in college the same way you did when you were six (and you are, you are, you _are_ , you're in her bed and she's in yours or she's shoving you into the ground and your long fingers curl in in her longer hair and you yank her mouth down to yours. Eight times out of ten, it earns you a bloody nose or a black eye and you love it, you love it, you _love it_ ). Losing touch would have saved you both skin and blood and vocal chords ruined by screaming - at each other, about each other, for each other - but you don't care. 

Touch is all you've ever been to each other, and it would kill you to stop being that to her. 

(As much as you insist to her that it wouldn't.)

To be honest, it doesn't bother you that she has other partners, people who want to be the summer of her life. You don't have a season, you're a force of nature. You're the tidal wave that crashes over her, the hurricane that rips up every last foundation she sets down, every bit of security and sanity she has elsewhere and brings her crashing back against you just as hard. There's nothing about who you are that she doesn't share and the way you reflect each other's worst is what keeps her hands at your throat and your nails sunk into her heart.

So you bury yourself into her like a fucking tapeworm and she tries to get you back for it, tries to make her body and life uninhabitable. When you get on to her for smoking cheap cigarettes inside of your house, she starts buying even cheaper cigars, filling your rooms with thick clouds as she chain smokes them (you complain and it's "God, aren't you EVER happy?" and when you tell her no, it ends with a cigar burn in your thigh and all your furniture and clothes still smell like the wrong side of a chimney). She'll fuck you in the back of your car just to throw you out afterwards and drive it around, but she usually brings it back and that's a hell of a lot more than you can say for the chumps she gets tired of or angry at, the idiots who find their car trashed in a ditched or smashed up in a scrap yard or pushed into a lake.

You move in cycles with her, steady as the moon, taking turns ruining each other violently, taking turns pretending to be asleep when the other turns tender, ignoring the fluttering kisses of soft morning or the curl brushed out of your face in hazy, moon bathed half-memories. At least, it all works that way until the night when you are bleeding from your nose and mouth and Vriska brushes a blood soaked curl from your forehead. And you know you are breaking your silent contract when you open your eyes and meet hers, and Vriska knows it too, and her nails drag hard on your cheek. 

You kiss her anyway, and she scowls.

"I love you." You say, and your voice is too raw, your lips broken and dripping, and you see fear in her eyes. She tries to cover it over with hatred, with anger, because violence is known and understood between the two of you and vulnerability is not.

Her hands wrap around your throat and she _throttles_ you, thumbs crossed in an 'x' over your windpipe.

"Take it back." She hisses.

"I love you." You gasp.

Before you know it, she is dragging you by your hair and slamming your head back against the wall and she is **screaming** and everything is so _hazy_.

"Take. It. _BACK_!" She shouts, and you kiss her when she puts her face right up next to yours.

You feel another crash against the wall as your head comes into contact with it, and you awaken to a dull ache in your skull and an ugly smear of blood on your bedroom wall. And Vriska is gone, along with your car, and it isn't until you get the call to come pick it up that it even occurs to you to worry about whether or not she's coming back at all.

You'd rather have her cursing at you and giving you head trauma than deal with the quiet sterility of your house when she's not in it. Your clothes start smelling like laundry detergent instead of smoke, to the point that you find yourself lingering around your closet when you indulge (it still doesn't smell the same, you can't physically ingest enough smoke for it to ever smell the same). 

Four rows of slashes through your lunar calendar pass before you have to force yourself to stop using the lipsticks she left scattered around your bathroom to mark them out. You put the stubbed tubes into the brass lipstick holder you bought for her five Christmases ago (the one she's never used once because she likes it when you're inconvenienced by every messy reminder of her existence in your life; because she likes it when you pick up after her and feel the reality of her cohabitation).

Nights drag by, and you find it's a lot easier to drink yourself stupid when Vriska isn't there to drink up all your liquor for you. You need it anyway, without her to wear you down to sleep, and the cycle continues until you come home one night to a front door ajar and a pair of spindly legs stretch over the arm of your couch.

And there she is, suddenly, blue lipstick smudged on the lip of your rum and black rat's nest stretching over the aubergine leather, dripping off the cushions of it and you don't give a damn if there are hickies on her neck that you didn't personally make for her. When you get close enough for her to pull on the bottom of your shirt, you find you sink to your knees and let her put her fingers into your hair, raking over your scalp. Without her around, it's become sensitive again, but the sharp pain means so little to you in comparison to how much the kiss that accompanies it means, and it's not long before the bottle of rum is spilling on the floor, all over your shed clothing.

And you tell her you love her in the way you kiss her over and over and over, anywhere she'll let you, and in the way you let her bend you this way and that.

"I love you." You finally tell her, because showing isn't enough, not even when you're a tangle of sweat-slicked limbs and bruises. She pushes you over onto the floor and stretches.

"I _know_." She yawns.

And you're pretty sure that even though she didn't mean to be, she's in love with you, too.


	3. Chapter 3

You have always been in love with Vriska Serket.

For that matter, she has always been in love with you.

You know why, you cannot remember a single, solitary moment where the two of you weren't joined at the hip. But more than that, you can't remember a single, solitary moment when the two of you didn't adore each other unconditionally, your conversations from the heart starting in the babbling chatters and coos of baby-speak and progressing into the singing of sharp edged blades that the two of you call tongues. She withholds her vitriol for the world from none but you, and you reward her in a thousand soft kisses and softer lullabies, her head usually resting in your lap as she lets the adoration wash over her like you're the eye of her own hurricane of a life.

That is why you find two young men at your table now, staring at each other. 

The one with his ridiculously styled, purple streaked hair is squinting his eyes behind thick rimmed glasses at the young man sitting opposite of him, all hunched in shoulders. Under any other circumstances, Eridan's eyes are lovely little specks, full-lashed and looking like someone ringed his pupils with anemone petals; like this, they're glinting slits and they inspire no love from you, not when you've gone to so much trouble to set out your best lace tablecloth and painstakingly arranged low tea. 

You flick his nose with one hand and set the tea tray down on the table with the other. It's a pretty thing, prettier than even the boy scowling at you with perfect contempt for your audacity - and Eridan can actually be very pretty when he's pouting.

Tavros looks from Eridan's face to the tea tray, and suddenly you'd think gold rimmed cedar was the most divine miracle anyone had ever imagined. He stares at it like a saviour instead of a mild excuse not to acknowledge another's animosity.

"You know I don't take sugar." Eridan grouses when you add a few lumps into his cup. Another glittering rose of pressed sweetness makes a plunk.

"You know I don't care." You reply sweetly, not even bothering to glance over as his bottom lip pokes out further. Instead, you focus on your newest guest. "How do you take tea, Mr. Nitram?"

He blinks, dumbly.

"Oh, uh. Sugar. No milk, and... Uh. Um. Lemon?" He replies, letting out a sigh of relief when he seemingly passes your test and you hand him his request, otherwise unadulterated.

"Uh, uh, uh." Eridan mocks under his breath. "It's a beverage, not a fuckin' gauntlet a verbal repartee an' mystery."

You flick his nose again. He positively _squawks_ , and Tavros smiles. 

"He's a lot like Vriska."

"Yes. Heavens only know what we did wrong in our past lives to deserve a world they share." You reply. 

"...I'm hoping for genocide at least, uh. Personally." The brown-eyed boy tells you, and for the first time, Eridan's glare lessens a little, and his eyes flicker to yours, wary.

He's always like this with any new prospects that mean anything to Vriska. Dating her was inheriting you, and so he'd never deign to question _your_ position in his life and hers, but everyone else? Another story entirely. (You remember when Vriska came home one day with Terezi Pyrope, you remember how hard you had to scrub to get the blood out of the carpet fibers after introductions turned to bickering and bickering turned to fighting and fighting ended with a cane splitting a scratch through Eridan's scalp that took thirteen stitches to sew back up.) 

The boy was born green around the gills with jealousy, but thankfully also with enough intelligence to know that you and Vriska will see his body dumped in a lake before you let him force monogamy on either Vriska or himself. 

"So, what uh.... What is it we're doing here, again?" Tavros asks, and you manage to stop looking chastisingly at Eridan long enough to manage one of your more charming smiles, all jade lipstick crescent and white teeth. 

"Introductions." You announce.

"An' plots." Eridan adds, one side of his mouth curling into a crooked half-smile.

Tavros Nitram gives you a look that is very, _very_ lost.

"And also apologies. _Eridan_." You prompt, earning a weary sigh.

"Fine. So Tavros, you're kind a hot an' I'm sorry about the... Greetin'." The lazy drawl and the way Eridan picks at his nails belies entirely that the greeting in question involved a lot of yelling and nearly scratching Tavros's eyes out when he introduced himself as Vriska's boyfriend. He at least has the decency to flush, though, and you're gratified that Tavros has enough experience with Vriska to understand it is the actual part of the apology, because Tavros's full lips (fuller than yours, fuller and darker and infinitely more suited to smiles than frowns) stretch.

"It's okay. Vriska told me you were kind of an idioooooooot." He sniggers, shoulders finally relaxing. The redness in Eridan's cheeks blooms ruddier, but Tavros turns the conversation to you before the other boy can burst into histrionics again. "And she told me you were beautiful. And, uh. Smart."

You find yourself leaning your chin on the heel of one hand, smiling genuinely now.

"And how do you find those descriptions, Mr. Nitram?" You ask, batting your eyelashes for effect. 

"Woefully under-crediting." He replies, and your heart softens a little more for him. You know Vriska sees safety and absolution in those copper coloured eyes, because you do, too.

"If you two are done consummatin' ocularly." Eridan interrupts, peeved to be left out of the ego-stroking, "We do actually have somethin' to be talkin' about here."

Though no one in the world would ever peg you for it - and if they did, they certainly wouldn't have the audacity to say so aloud - you completely understand that jealousy, his jealousy. When Vriska had started flirting with Eridan, you'd been the one to plant poison oak in his gym shoes and pour honey all down his book bag so that the hives of bees around your school would chase after him a little. It was only with the passage of time that you came to understand that nothing could induce Vriska to leave you, and you settled into something of a benevolent nature toward the ill tempered priss she kept running off to kiss and cut in the dead of the night. 

So you reach out and pet Eridan's hair absently, pushing his cowlick back with a patient tolerance.

"I haven't forgotten. I am getting there, Mr. Ampora. But there are certain things most polite society engages in called 'pleas-an-tries'." You over-annunciate each syllable so that it seems like you think he has permanent brain damage to the frontal lobe - he might, you know Vriska likes to slam his head against things, she brags to you when she can make him black out - and he hisses and nips at your delicate fingertips. Eridan is so high society that you're somewhat surprised he doesn't walk around in a cravat and a dickie, sipping French champagne perpetually. Consequently, explaining etiquette to him always pisses him off, and it is never not wonderful. 

Vriska is really right. He's so _pretty_ when he's upset.

Tavros clears his throat again, and you withdraw your hand.

"Well, so much for that. I suppose we really must press on." Despite your words, you take a measured sip of tea first, leaving a perfect imprint of jade lipstick over the powder-blue rim. The designs on it over it are of little blue spiders, and it screeches your possession louder than a siren set on a sailor. Tavros looks appropriately on edge at the pregnant pause, but says nothing; merely waits for you to talk. 

You like him.

"Mr. Nitram. Tavros. It seems you have become an indelible facet of Vriska's life." You explain, slowly but not insultingly, as you'd done with Eridan. "Therefore, I find it will be in everyone's interests to settle an understanding over... Mutual desires."

He blinks, and his large brown eyes are dusted with long lashes that quite literally look like the wings of a butterfly, and you are again stricken by how pretty he is. Your darling collects such pretty men, it's honestly beyond you how.

Eridan doesn't spend time lost in such thoughts.

"We're all kind of fuck buddies. You game?" He asks, blunt.

Tavros blinks again, his thick brows knitting together.

"I thought you were a lesbian?" He asks you, before his dark cheeks go darker with a flush and he claps one of those broad hands over his own mouth and continues to be lovely in general.

"That is generally how it has been addressed, yes." You reply, thoughtful and amused. "But what is that saying Vriska is so fond of...?"

"It ain't straight if it's in a three-way. Or with me, which is fuckin' problematic on a million different levels-" Eridan starts.

"You're problematic on a million different levels, Mr. Ampora." You reply, papping his cheek as a cue to shut up, and Tavros actually _giggles_ at the look of shock on the other boy's face and yes, he remains your favourite. "So what do you say, Tavros? It's alright if you're not game for it. We just need to clear the air on the matter before one of us-" You look very pointedly at Eridan, "- accidentally oversteps ourselves."

The boy beams at you, and you get the idea that he's not used to being asked permission, and even less preference. His smile is broad and a touch sly and he whirls his tea with his spoon as he conducts a response. Then his eyes go all copper-glow, and the beaming gets even sunnier, and it's so dazzling that even Eridan goes a little still, just staring.

"Yeah. Actually. I think, uh. I think I'd like that."

You smile warmly and arch an eyebrow at Eridan, and he waves you off with a terse expression. He didn't think it would work. You knew it would.

This is what you've always been best at: smoothing over the rough patches in life, stroking and fussing and meddling until everything lays flat and straight for you, another piece of cloth to be cut and stitched up according to your design, to be made into something infinitely more lovely. You can make a silk purse from a sow's ear, and this is why Vriska has loved you, will always love you. 

It is you who was there to dab antiseptic balm onto her elbows when she learned how to bike, it was you who was there to cobble her heart back together, you who have held her head in your lap and let her sobs dissolve into tears and snot against your skirt. You are a haven, a port in a strom, and now you share that halcyon with yet another, brushing a soft digit over Tavros's high cheek bone with affection.

"It's worth sayin' that we're here for Vris' first-" Eridan starts to snap. Tavros cuts it off by leaning out of your touch and over to Eridan and his large hand is even larger when it cups the nape of the other boy's neck. Eridan goes _so_ still, and when Tavros's thumb strokes over his adam's apple, he shudders hard and flushes and his eyes slide shut before he can remember to be glaring.

"Vriska first." He murmurs in assent, his voice like the best cups of espresso, dark and deep and smooth. You can see Eridan melt, let himself be pulled forward. It's entirely too nice to see how easily Tavros pulls him forward and into his lap. He winks at you, and you wink back, scooting your chair closer to his own.

It ought to embarrass Eridan, how readily he tips back his head and kisses Tavros, how easy it is for you to knead his thighs to putty, the whole of him melting between you two. You kiss his ankle, and then Tavros, and it's just as you're studying the shape of the mark your lipstick has made on the corner of his smile that the door to your apartment opens.

There Vriska stands, blinking a moment. Then, her face stretches into a smile, sharp and predatory.

"Aw. All for me?" She asks, kicking the door shut.

"Yes." You chorus back at her, all three of you, pleased and hoarse and warm.

"Eeeeeeeexcellent." She proclaims, and launches into a belly flop right over where Eridan is stretched out across your lap and Tavros's.

You have always loved Vriska Serket.

And you're so glad you're not the only one.


End file.
